Tag Archives: Time-lapse photography

Amusing Monday: Time-lapse reveals national-park wonders unseen

Time-lapse photography can add a new dimension to the way we see things. When done well, these speeded-up videos not only help us see things in a new way but also call us to remember feelings about special places and natural wonders.

On their first visit to Olympic National Park, brothers Will and Jim Pattiz captured images from various park locations for what would become a captivating video for the series “More Than Just Parks.” They traveled to some prime locations that many of us have visited, but their careful use of time-lapse equipment create a new sense of inspiration for familiar places.

So find a quiet moment, sit back and enjoy their video full-screen on your computer if not your TV.

If you’d like to learn more about the video project and what the brothers learned about Olympic National Park, read the interview on the Exotic Hikes website, or check out the background on “More Than Just Parks.”

One of my all-time favorite time-lapse videos was shot in Yellowstone National Park, where photographer Christopher Cauble captured the rhythms of nature in a place where geysers, streams, clouds and even the animals move with a natural fluidity. I especially like the sections where the video slows down to remind us about the normal pace of events — something not seen in most time-lapse videos.

The last video on this page shows Mount Rainier in a time-lapse video by West Coast Time Lapse, a company of Nate Wetterauer and Chase Jensen. Like the Olympic National Park video, this one about Mount Rainier was posted within the past year.

If you would like to see more time-lapse video of national parks, take a look at “15 time-lapse videos that capture national parks at their best” by The Wilderness Society. It contains parks from here in Washington (a different Olympic National Park video) to Maine, from Alaska to Texas.

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Amusing Monday: Time-lapse enters new realm

John Eklund, a professional photographer living in Portland, has moved time-lapse photography to a wonderful new realm with his recent release of “Purely Pacific Northwest.”

His video transforms the rather deliberate pace of nature into a stunning dance of clouds and stars. A heightened sense of movement is felt when he gradually changes the point of view — sometimes moving the camera horizontally and sometimes with a vertical angle.

Be sure to view this full-screen with the sound on.

The Internet has been abuzz with John’s video since it was released a week ago, so you may have viewed it already. The video was featured in Smithsonian Magazine’s online feature “Retina” and was mentioned in the Huffington Post.

The video includes scenic landscapes, mostly in Oregon, including Mt. Shuksan, Crater Lake, Mt. Bachelor, Mount St. Helens, Oregon’s Badlands, Painted Hills, Cape Kiwanda, Mt. Hood, Lost lake and Cannon Beach, as Eklund describes in the notes on the Vimeo page.

“I started this project in July 2011 and shot the final scene in August 2012,” he said. “I took approximately 260,000 images. I used 6.3 TB of hard drive space.”

On his website, “The Art of Time Lapse,” Eklund says he began his career as a portrait, wedding and landscape photographer. Then, in 2004, while browsing on YouTube, he became captivated and inspired by the time-lapse work of an artist posting as Mockmoon2000.

“Over the past eight years, my love for time-lapse photography has grown exponentially,” John writes. “The privilege and challenge of capturing nature’s beauty and sharing the unique aspects of time through my camera lens is incredibly rewarding.”

He says he has found plenty of opportunities to document the changes of time in Northwest landscapes. He also describes the equipment he uses for those interested in the technical side of things.

“My dream – and goal – is to travel all over the world, shooting breathtaking locations and telling our planet’s story,” he says. “I have discovered that when time is the storyteller, a special kind of truth emerges.”

More time-lapse videos, including John’s first use of a dolly, can be seen on his Vimeo page.

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Amusing Monday: Time-lapsing to a new viewpoint

This week, I thought we’d take a look at some water-related time-lapse photography. While this type of video is not really humorous, I find this stuff fascinating. Folks at People for Puget Sound got me started on the idea when they pointed out an amazing underwater video by the BBC. We’ll get to the BBC video later, but I wanted to start off by watching the flow of a stream in the video below.

The time-lapse project is by Kevin Bell of New Hampshire. The shots were taken at the Nashua River in his state and at the Willard Brook State Forest in Massachusetts. The still shots were from the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. The music is by Explosions In The Sky, from Texas.

When I visited the Chesapeake Bay region a few years ago to seek out similarities and differences to Puget Sound, I learned about the importance of oysters to the bay’s ecosystem. This time-lapse video by Chesapeake Bay Foundation shows how quickly algae can be taken up by native oysters in a controlled experiment.

This summer, Kitsap’s own Dale Ireland shot a cool video of Hood Canal, showing tidal changes, cloud movement and smoke coming out of the Dosewallips Valley during a forest fire. It also happened to be the hottest day on record for the area.

Finally, here’s the BBC video. A warning for the squeamish: The video includes the decomposition of a dead seal.

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